the after
by moirariordan
Summary: [Charmed] At the end of everything, there is only the Manor. [Bianca.Chris, Henry, Billie.]


00

**after**.  
At the end of everything, there is only the Manor. Sturdy and sprawling as always, it stands shadowed at the top of the hill, a guardian, a symbol of the mountains of knowledge and magic that your family has left as a base for you. You let Wyatt have it without argument.

Bianca helps you move all your shit out, spending an entire weekend at your side, packing and sorting, boxing and taping. She opens all the windows in the entire house and lets the summer breeze drift in, washing away any semblance of women's perfume that you might be able to still detect, and she doesn't let you go near the attic stairs. The whole process takes less than two days – you never really were much of a pack rat – and Wyatt avoids you the entire time.

You stay with her at her place in Chinatown, but it's dinky enough that after the first week or so you both decide unanimously to find a bigger place – you kind of love to be on top of her, but only at certain times of the day. When she's cooking, for instance, you especially wish for a living room or a study. You never really thought of it as a contact sport before you met her.

**then**.  
You buy a house north of the city, small and economized and practical – everything the Manor wasn't. You love it. Bianca feeds her femininity a little and decorates – deeps shades of burgundy in the carpets, shades of blue and grey in the curtains and Vermeer prints on the walls. She drapes the bed with deep green silk sheets with splashes of white, and when she lies naked on them she reminds you of a forest nymph.

She never dresses in black. She can spend hours at her closet, digging out clothes she hasn't touched in years, deciding between that blouse and this skirt. You pretend to tease her about it, but it's such a normal action that it settles your heart rate better than any sedative you've ever had.

You have a porch – or a deck, or whatever/something, and she drags you out there every morning to watch the sunrises. She's got an artist's eye; she loves to watch the colors swirl and the clouds explode into brilliance – you think that maybe she could've been a painter if… well, just if. You drink black coffee and wrap your arms around her waist, her body heat aligned to yours, and you stand in the morning mist, more together than apart.

Life is slow, for awhile. You don't hear from what's left of your family, and neither does Bianca. It's you and her and words like _us_ and _our_ and _we_ are thrown around a lot. It all feels like something you've been waiting far too long for.

**until**.  
You get a call in the middle of the night. It's Henry, and he needs your help. His voice spins your head and suddenly your nerves are tingling, senses alert, and there's a black hole in your head that sucks up every good memory you've painstakingly collected over the past few months and leaves only cold dread that seeps through your entire body. You bite your lip to keep from crying out.

You would really, really like to just close your eyes and unplug the phone, but there's enough of your mother left in you that keeps you from that fantasy. So you wake Bianca and dress and orb back to the city, because you're a Charmed Son, capital letters, and it's what you do, goddamn it.

**the Manor**.  
Paige's husband is thin and haggard without the vitality of his wife, and it makes you wince slightly to see the man who used to fill the room with his laughter looking ten times older than he should be. He stands in the middle of the conservatory awkwardly, as if afraid to touch the furniture for fear of infection, or worse, grief. You sit on the wicker couch and listen as he explains a kidnapping plot and says the magic words – _you're the only one who can save us_. You feel rather than hear Bianca's sharp intake of breath and you know exactly how that felt because you have that weird, creepy stabbing thing in your gut, too.

Billie is there as well, wearing a scowl and last season's shoes. She's always been somewhat of an enigma to you – an outsider merely pretending to play the Halliwell game. You remember from when she'd baby-sit you when you were young, the times when she'd drift off into nothingness, thinking of a lost family and an evil sister – and isn't it scary how history repeats itself like that? She stays constantly in attack mode, always alert and always aware, and you used to think that it was creepy, but now all it is is comforting. You think it's kind of fitting that it's Billie and Henry that are the first to drag you back into all this – both of their faiths merged together in the absence of the sisters – fiery versus solid. Of course they'd band together, especially after your departure, it's just obvious all of a sudden. It's a wonder they hadn't contacted you before.

It's funny how the weird quartet you all make all fall back into hunt and research so seamlessly. Funny in a sad, pathetic way – but funny all the same. You have the demon pinned down within two hours, and his hideout scried and spied in three and a half. Billie drags you out the door, and you have only a second to realize and wonder where the hell your brother is.

**fast forward**.  
Your leg hurts, you're sure it's a pretty bad burn. Billie is crumpled in the corner, bleeding from the ear, and you lost sight of Henry twenty minutes ago. Bianca is a mass of bruises, but still fighting like the warrior she is, though you can sense her weariness just as clearly as your own.

You're outnumbered. A trap. The innocents long dead, they were waiting for you, a mass of stench and bile, stumbling over themselves to get a chance to devour you. They just keep coming and coming and coming, and you feel vaguely disconnected from it all, the fighting turning to monotony, the exhaustion pulling you into apathy. Kick, punch, block, energy ball, dive, dash, orb, potion, TK. It's a pattern your body knows well.

Suddenly there's a loud sound, like a crack of thunder, and a flash of blinding light. You realize what's happening a split second before Bianca, and you pull her down. The earth rumbles and you hear laughter. You have seconds to think – _ohshitnononotagain_ – before everything goes black.

**family**.  
Bianca is already awake when you open your eyes. Her voice is tinged with relief, worry, pain, love – you can't think of anyone you'd rather hear right now.

You're in the attic. Of course you are. Bianca is imprisoned in a crystal cage, mere inches away from yours. The lights of the energy dance between your faces cruelly, and you want so badly to touch her; to smooth away the panic on her face. Her famous stone-cold calm is gone, her stoicism whisked away in the face of the blunt possibility of losing everything she'd worked for with you. You think He did this on purpose.

He is there. His face is twisted and ugly with dark magic, a combination of what he's inflicted on himself and the outside attack. He tries to taunt you, draw you out, maybe get you angry, but you're way past any semblance of real emotion for him at this point. There is only Bianca in your head, concern and worry and desperation, not her, He took everyone else and anyone but her, please.

You barely have time to notice Wyatt in a duplicate crystal cage across the room before he's in your face, the anger on his face reminding you of old memories that you're not even really supposed to have. It's unnerving to see him look at you as if he doesn't know you, when you know that once you and Wyatt were more than everything to him.

It's a clear path that stretches out in front of you, a choice between this way and that way that you can see as clearly as the man in front of you. You've been at a crossroads as this one before, far too many for someone your age, and parts of you still resent that fact, but since ever since you were little (both times) the ideas of duty and obligation have been drilled into you until you couldn't think straight, so it's not like you really even have a choice, even if it seems like it. It's a lot of yelling and incoherent mumbling, a light show of energy blasts and shields, powers you always knew He had but never really witnessed – but really it all comes down to something you know he doesn't realize.

You're more powerful than He thinks.

**death**.  
Wyatt's really bad off. He's obviously been holed up here for much longer than you have, and when you release him from the cage, he collapses at your feet. His hair is scraggly and unwashed, and when you turn him over he looks up at you as if he almost doesn't resent you.

Bianca helps you get him outside the cave…stone…whatever…thing. What's up with the hideouts lately, anyway? You orb him back to the Manor, finding Henry there with an unconscious Billie, and you push him into the shower, watching as he jerks awake.

He sputters incoherently, yelling and cursing, and you slide down the wall slowly, exhaustion setting in. You hear him do the same, water splattering over his clothes, hitting his skin with a loud slapping sound. Wyatt has always mourned audibly, and this is no different, and as you sit there, you remember something that you seemed to have forgotten.

He is your brother.

**recover**.  
You're official orphans, now. Billie has a concussion and a possible broken leg, and Henry drags her off to the hospital while Bianca stays and digs through the fridge to try and salvage something to eat.

You end up eating peanut butter out of the can, sitting up against the bathroom door, listening to Wyatt in the shower. You worry briefly if he might drown himself or something, but you hear him moving around from time to time, so you figure that's better than nothing.

It hasn't quite sunk in yet, and you can feel Bianca's worried gaze. You revel in a bit, absorbing the warmth of such attention, but it's when you start to hear him cry that it socks you in the stomach. You let out a breath you didn't realize you've been holding and your muscles tense up and relax at the same time. A strangled noise escapes your throat and you feel Bianca's arm move around your neck.

You turn into her and she smiles, reaching down to her lap and offering you a finger of peanut butter. You laugh and accept, making smacking noises and hearing her laugh. You lean down into her lap, tossing the food aside and feeling her stretch out to make it easier for you, and you sigh, thinking that as long as she's here, you might be okay.

**after**.  
In the end, there's only the Manor. A small gravestone sits in the backyard beneath the oak tree that provided your childhood with endless tree house attempts and failed tire swings. There is no service, no funeral. Technically He was dead already so the final blow doesn't really do much in the real world.

You and Bianca move back in with Wyatt and Henry. Billie has started dating a real estate agent and so has a premium apartment in South Bay. Wyatt starts school again after a couple of months. He wants to be a doctor. You refrained from commenting on his bedside manner.

It's not the same as your old house. There's more demon attacks and there's never any coffee in the morning, no deck and not nearly enough sunsets. But Wyatt slowly stops flinching whenever he looks at you, and Bianca even manages to make Henry laugh every once in awhile.

Your family is mostly gone, aside from the few straggling survivors that are left. The Halliwell plot at the mausoleum is overflowing. You've spent two entire lifetimes fighting for a perfection that you're not even sure existed, and you finally think that even after everything that's happened, this might be the best you're ever gonna get.

But you spend Saturdays holed up in your room with Bianca, wrapped up in blankets, her hair spread out on the inky green sheets. Her voice weaves a spell of calm around you, and you don't think you've ever been happier than in the moments when you listen to her talk about a future.

You think there's a lesson to be learned in here somewhere, but you're too weary to find it. You voice this to Bianca, and she tells you it doesn't matter anyway.

You know she's right.  
**life goes on**.

* * *

If you didn't catch on, 'He' is Leo. Draw your own conclusions from there. 


End file.
